Princess cruises

Princess Cruises is a cruise line owned by Carnival Corporation & plc. The company is incorporated in Bermuda and its headquarters are in Santa Clarita, California. It was previously a subsidiary of P&O Princess Cruises and is part of Holland America Group, which controls princess cruises brand. The line has 17 ships which cruise worldwide and are marketed to both American and international passengers.

The company was made famous by The Love Boat TV series, in which its ship, Pacific Princess was featured. In May 2013, Royal Princess became the flagship of Princess Cruises; she was followed by two sister ships, Regal Princess in May 2014 and Majestic Princess in the spring of 2017, with three more ships of the class under construction.

Princess also states that they will become industry leaders upon the launch of their new LNG powered vessels.

History

Princess Cruises is a cruise line owned by Carnival Corporation & plc. The company is incorporated in Bermuda and its headquarters are in Santa Clarita, California. It was previously a subsidiary of P&O Princess Cruises and is part of Holland America Group, which controls princess cruises brand. The line has 17 ships which cruise worldwide and are marketed to both American and international passengers.

The company was made famous by The Love Boat TV series, in which its ship, Pacific Princess was featured. In May 2013, Royal Princess became the flagship of Princess Cruises; she was followed by two sister ships, Regal Princess in May 2014 and Majestic Princess in the spring of 2017, with three more ships of the class under construction.

Princess also states that they will become industry leaders upon the launch of their new LNG powered vessels.

History

Princess Cruises began in 1965 when founder Stanley McDonald chartered Canadian Pacific Limited's Alaska cruise ship Princess Patricia for Mexican Riviera cruises from Los Angeles during a time when she would have usually been laid up for the winter. However, Princess Pat, as she was fondly called, had never been designed for tropical cruising, lacking air-conditioning, and Princess ended her charter in favor of a more purpose-built cruise ship Italia.

Princess, who marketed the ship as Princess Italia, but never officially renamed her, used the ship to inaugurate their Mexican Riviera cruises out of Los Angeles and did not receive the Princess logo on her funnel until 1967.

In 1969, Princess Italia was used on Alaskan cruises from San Francisco, but by 1973, the charter was canceled, and Italia returned to Europe on charter to Costa Cruise Line.

Princess's third charter ship was none other than Costa's Carla C. Originally, Compagnie Générale Transatlantique's SS Flandre, the ship had been purchased by Costa in the late 1960s and given a major rebuilding. Almost immediately after completion, the ship was chartered to Princess, and it was on board the ship, which was marketed as, but again not officially renamed, Princess Carla, that Jeraldine Saunders wrote the first chapters of her nonfiction book The Love Boats.

Britain's Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O), which by 1960 was the world's largest shipping company, with 320 oceangoing vessels, acquired Princess Cruise Lines in 1974 and their Spirit of London (originally to have been Norwegian Cruise Line's Seaward) was transferred to the Princess fleet, becoming the first Sun Princess.

The two ships that were to be featured heavily in the television series The Love Boat were built in 1971 at Nordseewerke for Flagship Cruises and originally named the Sea Venture (for the original Sea Venture, the 1609 wreck of which resulted in the settlement of Bermuda) and Island Venture. In 1974, P&O purchased them for their Princess division, and they served as Island Princess and Pacific Princess respectively.

A part-time addition to the Princess fleet was the former Swedish transatlantic liner Kungsholm, purchased by P&O from Flagship Cruises in 1978, and then restyled and rebuilt in Bremen as Sea Princess. She was initially based in Australia as a P&O ship until 1981 when her role there was taken over by Oriana. After that, she alternated between P&O and Princess colors as she moved between fleets. Sea Princess returned to the P&O UK fleet permanently and in 1995 and was renamed MV Victoria to allow a then-new Princess ship to be named Sea Princess.

The first P&O Princess Cruises purpose-built cruise ship was Royal Princess in 1984, the largest new British passenger ship in a decade, and one of the first, if not the first, ships to completely dispense with interior cabins. The ship served in P&O Cruises fleet as Artemis until 2011. The Swan Hellenic Cruiseship Minerva II, originally built as the Renaissance Cruises R8 was renamed Royal Princess in 2007 after an extensive refit during a drydock in Gibraltar.

In 1986, P&O Princess Cruises acquired Tour Alaska, which operated on the Alaska Railroad. Based in Anchorage, Alaska, Princess Tours now operates ten luxury railcars with full-service scenic tours of Denali (formerly Mount McKinley) and can accommodate over 700 passengers per day.

P&O Princess Cruises acquired Sitmar Line in 1988 and transferred all of its major tonnage to Princess, including three cruise ships then under construction. Dawn Princess and Fair Princess were both ex-Cunard, and the former Sitmar Fairsky became Princess's Sky Princess. The first of the three new Sitmar ships came into the Princess brand in 1989 as Star Princess, the largest British exclusively cruising ship. Two 70,000 grt cruise ships entered service in 1990 as Crown Princess and Regal Princess, bringing Princess's fleet up to ten deluxe cruise ships.

Princess Cruises was involved in litigation with General Electric in 1998 over consequential damages and lost profits resulting from a contract the two parties entered into. General Electric was to provide inspection and repair services upon the SS Sky Princess. Upon noticing surface rust on the turbine rotor, the vessel was brought ashore for cleaning and balancing, but good metal was unintentionally removed. This destabilized the rotor, forcing Princess Cruises to cancel two 10-day cruises while additional work was performed. Princess originally prevailed, being awarded nearly $4.6 million. On appeal, however, the judgment was reversed in favor of General Electric, and Princess Cruises only recovered the price of the contract, less than $232,000.

On October 23, 2000, the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O) spun-off its passenger division to form an independent company, P&O Princess Cruises. In 2001, Princess Cruises headquarters moved from Century City to Santa Clarita, California. P&O Princess Cruises merged with Carnival Corporation on April 17, 2003, to form the world's largest cruise operating company in a deal worth US$5.4 billion. As a result of the merger, Carnival Corporation and P&O Princess were integrated to form Carnival Corporation & plc, with a portfolio of eleven cruise ship brands. It is a dual-listed company, registered in both the United States and the United Kingdom, with the former P&O Princess Cruises being relisted as Carnival plc, more commonly known as Carnival UK. As an American-based company, executive control of Princess Cruises was transferred to Carnival's American operations, with Carnival UK taking control of Southampton-based Cunard Line. Princess and Cunard have offices at Carnival's head offices in both the United States and the United Kingdom.

On April 3, 2008 Micky Arison, the chairman of Carnival Corporation & plc, stated that due to the low value of the United States dollar, inflation and high shipbuilding costs, the company would not be ordering any new ships for their U.S.-based brands (Princess, Carnival Cruise Line and Holland America Line) before the economic situation improves. In May 2010, Carnival Corporation & plc signed a contract with Fincantieri for the construction of two new 3,600-passenger royal-class cruise ships for Princess Cruises. Royal Princess entered service in 2013 and Regal Princess entered service in 2014. Majestic Princess, also built by Fincantieri, entered service in 2017.

Current fleet

Royal class

Royal Princess

Regal Princess

Majestic Princess

Grand class

Grand Princess

Golden Princess

Star Princess

Diamond Princess

Sapphire Princess

Caribbean Princess

Crown Princess

Emerald Princess

Ruby Princess

Coral class

These two ships each have a capacity of 1,970 passengers and 895 crew.

Coral Princess

Island Princess

Sun class

These two ships each have a capacity of 1,990 passengers and 924 crew.

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